As Tom Porter [ph.], a Mohawk elder who’s a good friend of mine, explained to me years ago, giving thanks is something that the Creator told us to do every day. Everything begins with giving thanks. So, there’s no one time of year to give thanks. It is every day. When we think of it, we should say our thanks. [unint.] thank you for this air I breathe.
Thanksgiving is a complicated holiday. For one, it was only created as a national holiday in the Civil War to recreate national unity during a time of great strife. For another, the first celebration of a Thanksgiving in New England was done after the defeat of a Native nation by the Puritans. And it was to celebrate the wiping out or the destruction of that nation, the Pequot Nation.
The first Thanksgiving itself is a complicated story to write about. My sister, Marge, has co-authored a book called 1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving. At Thanksgiving they probably did not serve turkey. They probably served seafood. At that first Thanksgiving the Pilgrims did not wear the kind of costumes we see them wearing in the depictions. And what really troubles me is that this is the one time of year to celebrate Native Americans.
And everybody wants you to come to their school around Thanksgiving. And it’s often you go to a school and you see kids wearing paper feathers and people playing Indian, which is not something I would recommend. So, to me, the idea of Thanksgiving as a holiday is a complex one. And although our family gets together then and they share a meal, we think of it as something which is part of an everyday tradition. But because we get a vacation day off, hey, take advantage of it.
